In 1979, Basu Chatterjee made Baaton Baaton Mein and unobtrusively brought to us the dating and courtship rituals of a community that was till then either caricatured or just overlooked in Hindi cinema. Nancy Perreira and Tony Braganza…
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Matriarchal manipulation in a patriarchal world is depicted unsparingly in Usha Priyamwada’s Pachpan Khambe Laal Deewarein (Now playing on Prasar Bharti). The mother resentful of her lecturer daughter’s comfortable life in her college residence because the younger daughters…
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“Start with hope..always start with hope. We went from being a shitty team to become one of the biggest dynasties in the sport and all it needed was one match to light this fire,” says Michael Jordan at…
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In 1947, my grandparents brought three children and the remains of an uprooted life from Pakistan to India in a train. One of those children was my mother. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about the…
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Three documentaries streaming right now show the ultimate culmination of the Bois Locker Room culture. And what happens when one gender is taught to mistrust its instincts of self-preservation and the other does not even learn something as…
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In Sudip Sharma’s Paatal Lok (Now streaming on Amazon. Co written by Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra. Directed by Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy), India’s disowned inhabit the headlines we turn away from. A young…
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Dear God, Thank you! Thanks for this wonderful human life that you have bestowed upon me. I cannot imagine being a plant, an animal, a bird or something as gross as a centipede (due respect to your creative skills). ** Thank you for having made me a woman. It is far better than being […]
Today, I fell in love with a Pashto song. I imagined the writer, a handsome man, his features Afghan like I see on TV; to me they all look like poets. Thinking up beautiful lines. in the mountains, in the pleasant bitter coldness, of Waziristan. Now terroristan if we’re to believe the Americans. […]
Lately, Lord Krishna is a regular visitor in my REM sleep. The other night he was standing on the ghats of Benares, mesmerizing all with his melodious flute. Our eyes met with an unexplainable longing . Slyly he beckoned me to walk down the steps with him. I followed- like a dog follows his master. […]
The sun had begun to set on the horizon. Chanda’s frail arms could no longer carry the weight of Bablu. Cold and tired, she put him down on the cobbled pavement. The old mansion looked deserted. Chanda and her brothers huddled together to keep warm. “Will he come?” she wondered looking at the box in […]
“This only brings pain.” “There are so many obstacles.” “You are too simple to deal with this….forget this!” “They fight like dogs, can’t see each other’s faces, once they are over with this.” Those were Sujay’s esteemed friends’ opinion on ‘this’; the most dreaded yet sought-after human emotion – articulated by the four lettered word: […]
Chaos looms overhead, flashing lights, blaring horns, smoke, fog and the unnecessary chatter of people rushing past. And we sit, comfortable in a silence that could span for hours but hardly ever does. Understanding nods herald the oncoming of quick social breaks and prolonged periods of hibernation and still we sit, comfortable in a spatter […]
I first saw him in jeans and a white shirt, an orange knapsack over one shoulder. He never forgave me for asking if he was a good pilot, that first encounter. He claimed he stood on his toes to get picked for the Republic Day parade, so we could get to know each other in […]
The shrill ring of the phone snapped you out of your reverie – 8:30 am every day. It was no surprise. It was the same person. Always. Hours passed like minutes, years passed like months – we grew up together. When the phone wasn’t engaged, we spent our time huddled over a scoop of ice […]
Your heart must have skipped a beat when you first heard my heartbeat, Your brow must have frowned. How couldn’t it? You had nothing You must have spent many sleepless nights But look Maa, today here I am. Maa… You held on to me in your womb, with all your might, When life was scarce, […]
Trust. Is it a belief, a hope, an expectation? No. Belief is an exaggerated expectation. A conviction, an idea. Hope is a mere peg to hold on. A desire waiting to be fulfilled. Trust is neither expecting nor holding on. Trust is letting things be. Never reflecting.. never suspecting Never complaining of the betrayal It […]
A sword lodged in stone. That is how Francisco Goldman describes a daughter’s love for her missing father in his visceral tribute to his late wife Aura Estrada in his book Say Her Name which is partly a grief diary of a devastated husband and partly a fictionalised account of life after the death of a […]
They clucked around him in eager anticipation as he chopped a special treat for them… last evening, he chopped one of them as a special treat for himself on the same wooden block. Those hens, reminded me of someone. oh yes, human beings. we get bruised, beaten and betrayed but we still clamour for carrots. No […]